Music for Orphans explores memories and dreams of childhood and family, queer love and desire, the body in flower and in decline, and the natural world.  In these poems, a child has an unsettling first meeting with his mother’s new lover;  a herd of cows summons a poet to a dawn interview; a world capital falls into a dangerous trance; a horseshoe crab marches up a beach and through millennia to lay a clutch of eggs;  young lovers pass lotus-eater seasons in a remote farmhouse; an older queer man confronts his unreasonable yearning for beauty beyond reach or need; and a lost engagement ring reveals outlines of a life framed by divorces.
Wherever Andrews takes us — through life-shaping early moments, toxic encounters with American privilege, the life-long mysteries of Eros, the witnessing and comforting natural world — his poems deliver images, lines, and insights that linger in readers’ minds and reward re-reading.